General Motors reached a $900 million criminal settlement with the Department of Justice over faulty ignition switches which the company failed to fix for more than a decade leading to the death of over 120 people. She said the agreement was “tough” but added, “We didn’t do our job, and as part of our apology to the victims we promise to take responsibility for our actions”.
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The Justice Department has also deferred prosecution in the case, leading to a probationary period for the company over the next three years.
The and General motors has settled into an agreement about the resolution on the investigation on the criminal liability of the latter for concealing the harm that can be brought by GM ignition switch on their cars. But unnamed sources say there will likely not be any charges against individual employees at the company.
It is less than the $1.2 billion that Toyota Motor Corp agreed in March 2014 to pay to resolve a similar case alleging that its vehicles accelerated without warning.
GM admitted to failing to disclose to its US regulator and the public a potentially lethal safety defect with the switches that kept airbags from deploying in a few vehicles.
In a few cases, the power steering and power brakes stopped working due to the fault which allegedly increased the risk of injury in case of a crash.
After Valukas completed his investigation, GM fired 15 employees for their roles in the ignition-switch debacle.
Instead, Bharara wrote in court papers, it concealed the defect from regulators and the public “so that the company could buy time to package, present, explain and manage the issue”. That delay prompted the criminal action.
By the end of the year, the faulty switch had spurred a complete reexamination and overhaul of safety practices in the auto industry, not only among manufacturers but also within the federal agency charged with overseeing them, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
Responding later in the day, Barra, who has repeatedly blamed “old GM” management for letting the ignition switch problem get out of hand, insisted the company has made “substantial changes”. It set up a special fund previous year to compensate victims of the ignition switch defect. In all, many millions of cars are affected across six brands in the USA alone.
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On Thursday, the company said that it has agreed to pay the amount, and will spend about 5 million to settle other lawsuits that were filed over the safety scandal.
